Articles Posted inDependent Adult Abuse

When a senior in San Marcos suffers injuries as a result ofnursing home neglect or elder abuse, family members should know that this might not be a one-time occurrence. Afact sheet from the World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes thatnursing home abuse can be a single occurrence, or it can be repeated. In many situations, older adults are victims of recurrent abuse. What can you do if you are a senior and are being repeatedly victimized by an individual at your nursing home or assisted-living facility, or if you have an elderly loved one who is in this situation? In such cases, an elder or dependent adult abuse restraining order may be able to help.

What is Required for an Elder or Dependent Adult Abuse Restraining Order in California?

According to afact sheet from the California Courts, an elder or dependent adult abuse restraining order may be able to provide some protection to seniors who are suffering from nursing home abuse or neglect. In order to be eligible for one of these types of restraining orders, the elderly adult who is seeking the order must be at least 65 years of age, and must be a victim of one of the following:

What iselder or dependent adult abuse according to California law? For residents of Vista and other parts of Southern California, it is important to learn more about the protections available to seniors who may be subject tonursing home abuse. Arecent article in CalCoast News reports that the California Department of Justice arrested the owner and a former employee of an assisted living facility in the state for elderly dependent adult abuse. This case involves a critical case of nursing home neglect that resulted in the death of a resident. It serves as a reminder that laws are in place not only to punish perpetrators of elder abuse and neglect, but that there are also legal protections in place to prevent further abuse.

Details of the Recent Elder Neglect Case

As the article explains, the incident that led to the elder and dependent adult abuse charges occurred several years ago. In December of 2014, a senior, Mauricio Edgar Cardenas, at The Manse on Marsh, an elderly facility in San Luis Obispo, attempted to cross a street by himself. He was struck and killed by an oncoming vehicle, the driver of which was cleared of wrongdoing. When the accident happened, it was dark outside, and authorities determined that the motor vehicle driver could not have seen the victim in time to stop or to avoid hitting him.

A lack of federal funding for elderly healthcare could cause anursing home abuse epidemic in San Clemente and across the country, arecent article in The New York Times suggests. While a vote on the Senate health care bill has been delayed, even an amended version of the bill that includes drastic cuts to Medicaid could have serious and even deadly consequences for seniors living in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. As the article contends, if such a bill passes, introducing “Trumpcare” to California and to the rest of the country, it “is certain to produce drastic upheaval in the landscape of long-term care.” Medicaid is currently “by far the largest source of funding for nursing home stays,” providing the funding for almost two-thirds of all nursing home residents.

If funding ceases, the quality of care is likely to decline, as well. Such a cut to Medicaid would result, at best, in a rise innursing home neglect cases, the article argues. Could changes to Medicaid funding really produce such damage to elderly nursing home residents’ care?

If you file anursing home abuse lawsuit in Rancho Bernardo, can you be eligible to receive punitive damages? Punitive damages represent a particular type of remedy that is not awarded in many cases, including in lawsuits concerning nursing home abuse allegations. However, according to a recent opinion from the California Court of Appeals,Jarman v. HCR ManorCare (2017), there are indeed cases ofelder abuse in which punitive damages are appropriate.

This case is important for nursing home residents in Rancho Bernardo and throughout the state of California as it makes clear that the court system will hold nursing facilities accountable for egregious acts of elder abuse. What else do you need to know about punitive damages in order to understand the weight of this decision?

If you have an elderly loved one who lives in a nursing home in Oceanside or elsewhere in Southern California, do you need to be concerned about the risks ofnursing home sexual abuse? According to arecent report from CNN News, “vulnerable seniors are being raped and sexually abused by the very people paid to care for them.” Allegations of rape and sexual abuse are arising in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities across the country. Despite the fact that it is difficult to know precisely how many cases occur each year, the CNN News report suggests that “this little-discussed issue is more widespread than anyone would imagine.”

What are some of the significant findings in the report? What should you know about the signs and symptoms of sexualabuse in nursing homes?

If you have an elderly loved one who recently required care in a hospital and now will need long-term care in anursing home in Escondido, how do you know which facility will provide the best quality of care and does not have a history ofnursing home abuse or neglect? According to arecent article from NPR, a potential change to the rules concerning Medicare and hospitals’ rights and responsibilities toward patients could mean that more hospitals, which often see elderly patients in Southern California and throughout the country, could provide helpful information to families struggling to select a quality nursing home in their budget.

Up to this point, why have hospitals in San Diego County avoided giving patients and their families information about certain nursing homes that they believe can provide quality care? The article explains that “hospitals have long been reluctant to share with patients their assessments of which nursing homes are best because of a Medicare requirement that patients’ choices can’t be restricted.”

When an elderly loved one in San Diego requires nearly constant medical care, many family members are at their most concerned when that loved one has to be hospitalized. However, according to arecent article in California Healthline, one of the most dangerous periods forelderly patients actually starts after they leave the hospital, and perhaps not for the reasons you might think. The problem is not that the elderly person does not receive sufficient care after a hospital visit, but rather that the patient failed to receive proper care while in the healthcare facility. Does this rise to the level ofelder neglect?

Problems Associated with Poor Transitional Care

The time between leaving the hospital and receiving care either from a home caregiver or staff members at a nursing home in Southern California is known as a period of “transitional care.” As Alicia Arbaje, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine explains, “poor transitional care is a huge, huge issue for everybody, but especially for older people with complex needs.” While “the most risky transition,” Arbaje explains, “is from hospital to home with the additional need for home care services,” since it is the type of situation about which the least is known, injuries resulting from poor transitional care can also happen when the patient goes from a hospital to a local nursing home.

Law enforcement officials are often in a unique position to recognize signs and symptoms ofelder abuse in the San Diego area. Yet, as anarticle from In Public Safety points out, police officers frequently are not sufficiently trained in recognize nursing home abuse and neglect, and as such they inadvertently miss the symptoms that could help to prevent future injuries and, in some cases, deaths. Sincenursing home abuse cases also can coincide with calls concerning assault and domestic violence, it is important for law enforcement officers to be trained to recognize the signs of elder abuse.

One of the first things we can do, the article suggests, to change the ways in which police officers evaluate whether someone has been the victim of elder abuse is to require specific training about nursing home abuse and neglect. In our state, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) does have requiredtraining for mandatory reporters, but not all law enforcement officials understand the extent of elder abuse in the community and the ways that we can work together to help prevent it.

Nursing home abuse is a serious problem in San Diego. For a number of years, elder safety advocates have been looking for new ways to prevent nursing home abuse, as well as to properly identify it when it does happen. According to arecent article from USC News, “doctors, first responders, and other health care professionals can use techniques inspired by law enforcement to better identify and address cases of elder abuse.” This new methodology for detectingnursing home neglect arose from a clinical study at USC’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

When we say that healthcare providers and emergency responders should take a cue from law enforcement when looking for signs and symptoms of elder abuse, what, precisely, do we mean? In short, the study suggests that a “forensic lens” approach can help those not trained in law enforcement to determine where there is “cause to believe neglect or abuse [has] taken place.”

According to anarticle in Psychology Today, mental illness has become “the biggest economic burden of any health issue in the world, costing $2.5 trillion in 2010” alone. By 2030, that cost is expected to nearly triple to $6 trillion. However, despite the prevalence and costliness of mental illness—approximately 450 million people across the world currently suffer from some form of mental illness—the article emphasizes that mental health conditions continue to carry a stigma that prevents us as a society from talking about them openly and honestly. Unsurprisingly, the continued stigma of mental health or mental illness also makes its way into nursing homes, where patients who suffer from a mental health condition often becomes victims ofnursing home abuse or neglect.

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